CHAPTER XXVI.
Deborah was saved the pain of giving evidence against Amos Goodhare, for that gentleman, having by his ruse of a sprained ankle, put the policemen in whose charge he was a little off their guard, managed to escape from their guardianship before they got to the end of the court, and by means of the London fog which had helped him so much already, got away, doubled on his pursuers, and took refuge, with great astuteness, in the very house in which he had been caught, even before the men who were now in charge of the body of the murdered man had left the building with their burden.
Amos was never caught; indeed, the authorities seemed rather slack in his pursuit; and as he had the astuteness to leave the country immediately, nothing more was ever heard of him until two years later, when he died in Paris, in abject poverty.
The sensational death of Lord St. Austell was never fully explained to the public. As the recovered crown jewels were immediately re-set and restored to their places among the rest, the temporary loss of them was never widely known, and the country bumpkins who go to the Tower to stare at the treasures, which many Londoners have never seen, are still as much impressed as ever by the antiquity of the gold of King Edward’s crown. So that the murder of the earl was generally believed to have been merely the sequel to a commonplace affair of robbery, affected by means of a decoy.
Rees and Sep also got off much more easily than they deserved, the whole affair having died out of the public mind before the former was in a fit condition to be moved from Lady Susan’s house to his mother’s home in Carstow. But Rees was injured for life. No physician could give him hopes of more than a sickly existence, with constant danger of the re-opening of the wound. So much his excesses of the past year had done to undermine a fine constitution. And another wound was in store for him.
Sep crawled back one cool April evening, shivering, miserable, and half crazy, from want on the one hand, and a guilty conscience on the other, to his old aunt at Carstow, who took him in and nursed and tended him with unquestioning goodness. But he was never the same man again. Without suffering evidently from impaired reason, he fell into a lethargic state, and was subject for the few remaining years of his life to fits of nervous depression which nothing could cure. One sign of the change in him was that he hated the sight of Rees, and would turn hurriedly out of his way as soon as his formerly beloved companion came in sight.
Rees, in spite of his wound, took things more easily, and was easily nursed back, by the adoration of his mother and of Lady Marion, into nearly his old belief in himself. Lady Marion, whose devotion was, if possible, more pronounced than ever, returned to Llancader as soon as he went back to Carstow, in order to be as near to him as possible. His evident preference for Deborah did not disconcert her; she was resigned to everything but losing sight of him, and accepted any small crumbs of gratitude and kindness which he chose to throw to her with humble joy.
Partly, perhaps, because Deborah showed no particular devotion, but more of a kindly and even contemptuous pity in her ministrations to his comfort, Rees showed for her something nearer to genuine affection than he had ever showed to a girl before. Nothing was done rightly for him except by her; and as Mrs. Pennant had not resolution enough to interfere with any caprice of her darling boy’s, the young girl was in danger of losing her health by the close confinement his demands upon her care involved.
At last Godwin, whose disgust was unbounded at the fuss made over the returned prodigal, stepped in to say a necessary word for Deborah. Since his brother’s arrival, Godwin had been on very distant terms with her, having given Rees a colder welcome than she thought right. They had, therefore, not held any conversation together except of the most formal kind, when, finding, an one of his fortnightly visits, that she began to look pale and dull-eyed, he ordered her out for a walk in such an angry and peremptory tone that his mother backed up his command with coaxing words of entreaty.
“Yes, dear, go, do go,” said the old lady, who had now almost recovered from her paralytic stroke, but who had been, since that misfortune, more afraid of masculine wrath than ever. “Godwin is quite right. You do want a walk. Rees will let you go, I’m sure; he’s never selfish.”
The poor old lady really believed this; and Godwin’s grunt on hearing her ingenuous remark was not likely to undeceive her.
Rees, who was still confined a great deal to the house, gave an unwilling consent to Deborah’s going out “for an hour.”
“Only for an hour, mind,” he added, as she went out of the room. “I shan’t drink my tea unless you make it. I don’t want to be poisoned.”
“All right, Rees, only an hour,” sang out Deborah good-humoredly, as Godwin closed the door for her.
As soon as he had done so, Godwin walked over abruptly to the armchair in which Rees was leaning back.
“Do you know that you ought to be ashamed of yourself not to give more thought to that girl’s comfort?” he said, in what both Rees and his mother considered a cruelly sharp tone. “How is she to keep her health if she is stuck in the house all day attending to your fads?”
“Godwin, Godwin,” remonstrated Mrs. Pennant, shocked beyond measure at this irreverent treatment of her divinity, “you must not speak like that to our dear Rees! He knows there is nothing we would not, any of us, gladly do to help him to get well, and to wile away the tedious hours before he does get well.”
“You don’t quite seem to understand, Godwin, my boy,” said Rees, with a touch of haughtiness, holding up his hand languidly to stop his mother. “I should be the last man in the world to take advantage of any girl’s devotion to me. I am going to marry Deborah.”
“Indeed! Well it’s very good of you, I must say,” said Godwin, with a bitterly ironical tone. “Of course, then, it’s much easier for her to be a slave to your whims, since she knows it is to be for life!”
“Godwin, Godwin, my poor darling will be ill again if you speak so and excite him,” wailed the mother.
“Serve him right. I never heard of such a pitiful sham martyr in my life,” said Godwin, shortly; and not daring to trust himself to deliver such a lecture as he had in his mind, he went quickly out of the room, leaving Mrs. Pennant to sob on her darling’s neck, and to assure him that he must forget every word of what his brother had so cruelly said.
“Remember, Rees dear,” she went on tenderly, “he only speaks like that because he wanted to marry Deborah himself. But, of course, she preferred my own boy, my darling eldest son.”
And she passed tremulous fingers through his curly hair.
“Have you told her yet that you mean to marry her?”
“Not yet, mother. I think I will to-night, after what that young cub said.”
“Do, dearest. I suppose she knows what you mean to say to her; but she’s been really very good and devoted to you, so why should you defer the pleasure it will give her?”
“All right, dear mother, I’ll speak to her to-night—that is, if she’s not too late to make my tea,” he added, with the petulance of a spoilt child.
Meanwhile, Deborah, unmindful of the honor which was in store for her, was revelling in the fresh, sweet air of a spring afternoon. After a moment’s debate as to where she should go, she turned her steps towards the river, crossed the bridge, and almost ran down to the meadow where, twenty months ago, the three confederates had found the second entrance to the underground passage.
She wandered along the river bank, looking now at the grey towers of the castle, and now at the pale green foliage which sparsely covered the trees on the opposite bank, when suddenly she was startled by two rapid steps behind her and a sharp touch, which was almost a light blow, on her shoulder.
Turning quickly, she saw Godwin, who looked angry and harassed. He stopped short, so she had to do the same.
“So you’re to be my sister-in-law,” he said, abruptly.
“Well?” said Deborah, quietly.
“I wish you joy of your post as wife to such a man as Rees has become.”
“Is that kind of you?”
“I can’t help it. I must say what I think for once. I’ll never mention the subject again. If you like to be the slave of a man who hasn’t it in him to care for you, what right have I to object?”
“What right, indeed,” said Deborah.
“There, that’s enough. I didn’t know whether you, being a woman, could understand what a wreck, morally even more than physically, that unfortunate lad has become. So I thought I ought to warn you. Of course, I find it is useless; I might have known it would be.”
“It is indeed,” said she, in a peculiar tone.
“Of course, you think I am speaking from a selfish motive. But I am not. I gave up all hopes of you as soon as I knew that Rees was coming back.”
“And devoted your attentions to the second Miss Brownlow?” asked Deborah, rather archly.
“No, that was all nonsense. I never spoke to the girl in my life, except to offer her a cup of tea,” said Godwin, despondently.
“Didn’t you?” asked Deborah slowly.
“No. Unlucky beggar that I am, I never can look at any other woman but you, except to find fault with her. I suppose it will be different when you are married. I hope so.”
“And I hope not,” said Deborah, laughing gaily.
Godwin looked at her with a rather puzzled expression.
“Don’t you remember telling me,” said she, saucily, “that a woman was always sorry to lose an admirer? How much more must this be the case, then, when that admirer is her own husband!”
Godwin stared at her in bewilderment. Deborah looked across at the castle.
“What on earth do you mean?” asked he, at last, slowly.
“Find out,” she answered, making the words come in to a tune she was humming.
“Aren’t you going to marry Rees?” asked he, in a loud and stolid tone.
“Not if he were an emperor or an angel,” answered she, simply.
Godwin looked at her for a few moments as if he scarcely dared to take in the meaning of the situation.
“Then you’ll have to marry me,” said he decidedly.
“ ‘Yes, if you please, kind sir, she said,’ ” answered Deborah, with a smile and a deep curtsey.
“But you don’t love me,” whispered Godwin, whose voice had suddenly broken and grown husky.
“Not more than I have done for the last six months. But then that’s a good deal,” added Deborah below her breath.
Rees Pennant displayed the rage of a spoilt child thwarted when, on the return of Godwin and Deborah together, the former announced their engagement. He stormed all that evening at the fickleness and insincerity of women, to a sympathetic accompaniment from his mother, who never quite forgave Deborah for what she called “jilting poor Rees.”
Still in a tumult of angry pique, Rees straightway proposed next day to Lady Marion Cenarth, who accepted him with rapture. He duly married her before many weeks were over, in spite of the opposition of her relations. It was a fate much too good for him, but his punishment lay in the fact that he never understood this, but really believed that the abject sort of happiness Lady Marion found in ministering to his lightest caprice was a more than ample recompense for any woman’s devotion.
Godwin, whose services by this time had proved valuable, was, within a few months of his marriage to Deborah, removed to Carstow, to take charge of the large estates in that neighborhood, where they both continued to lead the quiet life they liked best.
And so a second romance, of a brighter cast than the first, was ended in the shadow of the old grey castle walls.
THE END.